Disclaimer: If it's familar, it isn't mine.

A/N: Please read and review. I don't have much experience writing fight scenes so constructive criticism is appreciated (emphasis on 'constructive'). As with the second chapter, playing 'spot the crossover/reference is encouraged since I thought that it might make things a bit more interesting. I'll include a who's who at the start of the next chapter

As a species, human beings are surprisingly resilient. Given the chance they can adapt to almost anything, not just in the practical or physical sense but in the mental sense as well. If there's one thing that history has shown it's that humans can make a life for themselves under even the harshest of circumstances, particularly if there's a friendly face or two there with them. After the Halloween Event pretty much everything fell apart. Infrastructure collapsed, it was no longer safe for people to stay in their homes or go outside and billions of people were either killed or 'replaced'. Never the less, after the panic had faded and humanity had chance to catch its breath, a recovery of a sort took place. Since the outside world had become a very hostile place, people throughout the world adopted a tactic that had served their ancestors well when hiding from more mundane dangers and retreated into hurriedly constructed fortified settlements. In the US they were usually called colonies, in the UK, shelters, castles or forts (the term's usage having more in common with Celtic hill forts then military strongholds), depending on the location and nature of the strongholds as well as the mindset of the inhabitants. In Finland, they were linnkaupunkiaset, in Italy and Spain, santuario. The names may have varied but they were all essentially the same thing, a place of safety and security in a chaotic world, and once that security was obtained, no matter how fragile it may actually be, the survivors began to adapt. Slowly and cautiously, groups ventured out from the assorted safe havens to search the wreckage and rubble of the Old World and salvage what they could to help them survive in the New, while within the walls people found a little bit of normality amid the upheaval and struggling. Children attended lessons at improvised schools, families stuck together as best they could, people bonded over mutual grousing over the rationing, the weather and being cooped up, and more often then not some enterprising individual managed to find some way to make a profit, usually involving scavenged or homebrewed alcohol.

In Russia a mage who's existence was down to the simple fact that before Halloween there'd been a man who'd shared his name and dress sense was regretting sampling the wares of one of these post-apocalyptic entrepreneurs, although neither regret or the splitting headache would stop him from doing so again. The headache was ramped up several notches when a blonde wearing woman who for some reason was wearing sunglasses indoors banged on his door and demanded to know if he'd got up yet.



In Australia, a man with an unfeasibly long brown braid, eye patch and nose plaster flirted with a faintly Japanese looking girl wearing a miniskirt and carrying nunchaku. There's no real heat behind the flirting, his heart is set on a girl with an oversized chest and a gun that was even more so. As for the girl, her mind is occupied with thoughts of another man with long brown hair.

In America a teenage boy struggles through the wilderness while many miles further south a young green-clad youkai tends to an injured girl and a few rooms away a woman who'd been rendered young again, albeit in a different body wages a never ending war with the demon that is paperwork.

And in the UK, a youth with a thick head of unruly scarlet hair is having his butt kicked for the umpteenth time, while the one doing the kicking concentrates on holding back enough to keep it to bruises and trying not too look too smug about the situation.

"Had enough yet?"

The youth picked himself up, wiped his muddy palms on his equally muddy combat trousers and glared.

"Nope."

The duo had been at the fort for about six weeks. Compared to the various US colonies and even a few of the other British ones it was fairly basic but still more then adequate and a vast improvement on where they'd lived previously. The site was a former school, actually two schools that'd existed side by side, around which was a wall composed of rock hard sections of transmuted earth which had been further extended upwards by the addition of a wall made of perfectly normal, albeit rather thick brickwork. The brickwork section was backed by a narrow platform and incorporated embrasures and crenellations to allow for defense of the walls.

The ones doing the defending were a motley bunch of pre-Halloween soldiers and Army cadets, a few reenactment types who'd been altered to varying degrees and were still getting to grips with more modern weapons and tactics, a couple of handfuls of hurriedly trained normals, and assorted altered combatants ranging from fictional soldiers to fantasy characters to a relatively small number of computer game and anime characters.

The fort was well stocked with various provisions thanks to it's proximity to heavy industry, assorted warehouses and a large port, although rationing was still necessary to make the food supply last as long as possible. On the other hand, there was something of a surplus of assorted flammable chemicals, which the settlement's inhabitants were quick, and often rather creative, in utilizing as 

an assortment of weapons to compensate for the shortage of firearms (apart from the ones that had been created by the Event, there was only a handful of rifles belonging to some of the soldiers, a couple of shotguns, the occasional formerly illegal handgun, and a few improvised firearms that were usually both impractical and dangerous to use). The level of offensive creativity went up a few notches when a group who went to make contact with the Guisborough shelter managed to 'poach' the borderline demented but rather talented individual who'd made Kieran's bolo rounds. Whether said individual was an 'original' or a product of Halloween was unknown and for the most part no one really cared, least of all the man himself.

Inside the walls, a somewhat warped version of normality maintained a rather shaky existence. The old school buildings had been converted to a variety of uses including accommodation, an orphanage and a largely improvised hospital staffed by a mix of pre-Event medical personnel and the products of a doctors and nurses themed costume party. The school kitchens provided three meals a day, with the main hall acting as overflow for the dining hall and the settlements inhabitants eating in shifts. The main hall also acted as a general purpose meeting space. Further accommodation was provided outside and consisted of a hotchpotch of caravans, camper vans, large tents, prefabs, converted cargo containers, a few rows of what looked suspiciously like large garden sheds, and assorted hastily built structures. A few stalls and doorstep vendors sold an assortment of items that weren't subject to rationing which included everything from sweets to shoelaces, and the occasional handmade sign advertised cobblers, clothing repair and hairdressers. The few patches of unoccupied space had been unofficially commandeered as combined recreation/training grounds and were in almost constant use, either for kick-abouts or impromptu combat training. The de facto stepbrothers generally used the one about three minutes walk from where they were staying.

The training had begun about a fortnight after their arrival. As Nero had suspected, Kieran had been more banged up then he'd admitted, with extensive bruising and a couple of yanked muscles. However, there'd also been a bit of a surprise when a check-up revealed that the injuries healed up much faster then normal, with bruises that should've taken at least a month to heal fading in a couple of weeks. After a certain amount of confusion and speculation as to whether or not Kieran was as human as they thought, they finally found out the most likely explanation when Kieran somewhat sheepishly admitted that his old self had a tendency to not bother doing the research and had often given his character overly optimistic recovery times on the few occasions when he'd had him get injured in the first place, and as with the rest of his writing cock-ups it'd carried over to his post-Halloween self. At least this time it'd been something useful.

Shortly after getting his clean bill of health, Kieran decided that it was high time 

that he did something about his inability to hold his own without his shotgun and started to pester Nero for lessons. It'd taken him two days to talk him into it, and as they quickly discovered, just because someone is good at doing something, it doesn't mean that they were any good at teaching it, although mutual stubbornness prevented them from admitting defeat before the other did. Never the less, progress was being made. Slow, painful progress punctuated with periodic trips to the hospital, but progress none the less. For one thing Kieran had pretty much mastered the art of dodging.

Picking up the weighted staff that was standing in for his edging knife, Kieran adopted a loose fighting stance and watched his opponent warily. Without any warning, Nero took a swing with his own stick which ended up hitting air formerly occupied by Kieran, who chose that moment to attempt an attack of his own which was equally unsuccessful. Ducking to avoid another swing, he danced to the side and aimed a blow at the back of Nero's legs, only for his staff to be kicked out of his hands. Shaking his hand to try and lessen the pain in his battered knuckles, he made an attempt to retrieve it and ended up narrowly avoiding getting whacked on the shoulder. A follow-up swing connected with his legs and swept them out from under him, sending him sprawling on the half-dead grass, but before Nero could do the 'stick-at-throat, if-this-was-for-real-you'd-be-dead' thing, Kieran rolled out of the way and scrambled to his feet. Realizing that getting the staff back wasn't going to happen any time soon, he darted out of Nero's line of sight and aimed a kick at his waist. And promptly ended up on his back with the wind knocked out of him. This time he was too busy trying to get his breath back to do anything else.

"That's enough for tonight."

"I'm. Okay. Just. Gimme. A. Minute."

"Nah. I'm starting to get bored. It's just too damn easy to kick your ass."

Kieran glared at him, the effect somewhat ruined by the fact that he was still struggling to breathe. After a moment or two his lungs returned to something approaching normal.

"You planning on sleeping there?"

Kieran stuck two fingers up at him. Nero grinned and held out his left hand. Kieran grabbed it and was promptly hauled to his feet.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I think. Just a bit winded."



Nero made a non committal noise in the back of his throat and walked off in the general direction of "home". Kieran followed, still panting.

The place that was currently the nearest thing they had to a home was one of a terrace of eight one room concrete block shacks that were roofed with corrugated metal and plastic and were just over twice as wide as the bunks that took up a sizable chunk of the available space. Such structures were fairly common in the fort, built in a rush and out of whatever materials were available, terraced and crammed as close together as possible to make the most of the available space. Their's was a bit better built them some and was unofficially known as J Road, due to the fact that characters from anime, manga. JRPGs and Japanese computer games were something of a minority in the fort and through either accident or design over half of them had ended up being housed in the same row. Kieran and Nero weren't entirely sure why they'd ended up there, although it had something to do with their looks and Nero's weaponry. As for their neighbors, they knew most of them by sight and a couple by name but hadn't really spoken to them that much since Nero wasn't exactly the social type and Kieran wasn't much better a lot of the time.

Crunching down the gravel path that ran in front of their row, they reached their door and walked in. Inside it was painted an off-white, the concrete blocks and cement clearly visible. The bunks took up the left side of the room and a mostly empty chest of drawers occupied the far corner, a liter sized bottle of water and a large plastic bowl resting on top of it. Kieran used them to wash the mud off his hands and the collapsed on the bottom bunk. Although not really injured beyond the usual bumps and bruises, several parts of his anatomy were making their displeasure felt. Longing thoughts of a hot shower couldn't be more then that, since like a lot of things hot water was rationed to one five minute shower a day and he'd had his that morning, besides which he couldn't be bothered with walking to the shower block. On the other side of the room, Nero snorted at the slightly pathetic sight in front of him. Deciding that Blue Rose could do with cleaning he sat down at the small table that took up a fair bit of the space not occupied by bunks or drawers to take care of it.

Kieran meanwhile had had a bit of a brainwave. Kicking off his trainers he rolled himself up into a blanket cocoon in the hope that the trapped and accumulated body heat would have the desired effect.

He must've fallen asleep because what seemed like a moment later his cocoon had disintegrated a bit, his muscles had mostly stopped aching and an alarm was wailing.

A/N: Characters suggestions are welcome. There's the other inhabitants of J Road plus a whole heap of non-anime characters and while I've got a few in 

mind I need more to bring up the numbers. I am also initiating a name the shotgun contest on the basis that pretty much all the weapons in DMC have names and while Kieran isn't actually a DMC character he does spend a lot of time in close proximity to one, not to mention that there's a fair bit of hero worshipping developing (although he'd never admit it) partly because he lloked up to his step brother before Halloween and a bit of that has carried over, and partly because Nero is awesome. Ergo, the gun gets named.